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Esholt Hall: Two sides of the story...

Crunching up the gravel drive to Esholt Hall's impressive front door, there seems little to be scared of. It's a solid-looking place, its tall windows looking out over some very pleasant lawns and woodland. It's the very essence of an English country house, in fact, though now it's that most mundane of things - a conference venue and training centre owned by Yorkshire Water. Despite its very 21st century role, the building certainly goes back a long way: there's been a hall on this site since medieval times and it was originally a convent. With so many people passing through over the centuries, it's perhaps no suprise that Esholt Hall hides a few mysteries in amongst its old stones.

Barry stands on the 'stained' stair

To cast some light on the eerie side of Esholt, and to recount some tales of the unexpected, is Barry Tetley ("The beer or the tea, whichever you prefer!"). He worked here for over thirty years and still lives nearby so knows a thing or two about the Hall's darker, damper corners. He's a confirmed cynic about the spookier tales that surround the Hall. As he says: "Unless I see it for myself, I'm a bit sceptical." And, as we tour his old, erm, haunts it's clear that he takes all these stories with a hefty pinch of salt. However, one incident remains unexplained - but more of that later!

Spooky: Esholt Hall cellars

The cellars are also where one particularly unfortunate incident is said to have happened. In fact, explains Barry it's still said to leave its mark right up to the present day. He stands at the bottom of the steep stone steps which lead down to the darkness beyond and points at one of them: "People say there was someone killed and pushed down these steps. They say every so often a mark appears on this step. It's a stain caused by someone being thrown down here." Though he quickly adds: "I think it's just that when it gets damp down here, it comes out in the concrete. My philosophy is that unless I've seen it myself, then I need some convincing. But, I have had funny goings-on..."

The staircase: But is it haunted?

Just beyond the entrance is the Hall's main staircase and, as you might hope or expect of a place like this, that too has been the location for a ghostly sighting. Barry says he came in one morning to find one of the cleaners sat down, hands shaking, trying to gulp down a calming cup of tea: "She was looking a little bit grey. The lady in charge of the cleaning said, 'She's seen something on the staircase'. It seems she'd been cleaning in the entrance way and had just happened to glance up at the staircase and she saw a lady stood there in a black dress. She looked down, looked back up and it had gone. She was adamant she'd seen something up there and she was quite shaken up by it."

Alan Maddocks: "It feels a bit eerie"

And there is obviously plenty to wonder about at Esholt Hall - at least with all the tales surrounding the place. There's the one about the bones of the last Prioress which are allegedly hidden behind an inscribed stone halfway up a wall. There are the animal bones which were found under the stones in the cellar (most likely just chucked away after a hearty meal, says Barry Tetley, but who really knows?) And then, as Barry explains, there was another strange sighting of a woman in black on what's known as the Nun's Walk - a classic ghost story if ever there was one: "It's a footpath at what used to be the top of the gardens. It's grossly overgrown now, but there was a tale that one day, when the Hall was Bradford Corporation's sewage treatment works, one of the men had been doing a job on a house which stands in the woods. He was walking back along the Nun's Walk and it was a bad day, raining heavy and with the wind blowing. He had his head down and collar up and saw this lady walking towards him with a black cape on. He said, 'Good afternoon' to her and she walked past him. Then he looked back and nobody was there." The man in this story is said to have left his job for good shortly afterwards, never to return to Esholt Hall...   

Barry: "The dog would not cross it"

Now, these are all fantastic tales and Barry's a great storyteller but, as he says, he remains sceptical - choosing not to believe what he hasn't actually seen. This philosophical attitude was tested, though, when something happened at Esholt Hall that he still can't properly explain to this day: "It happened near the top of the cellar steps before the place was renovated. They had their own caretakers, a couple who had a labrador which had a typical temperament - very placid, very nice. It basically had the run of the Hall after people had gone home at night, and for him to be able to get out of the back door he had to cross an intersection of two corridors. This dog would not cross it. He had to be encouraged and enticed and sometimes physically dragged across it, its hackles used to go up and it used to set its legs. The caretaker often told me about that and I used to have a little bit of a smirk and think it was a wind-up. But it just so happened that I had a dog, a golden labrador like his, and it had never been in the hall. He said, 'Why not bring her across?' So I fetched her and she bounded in through the back door, straight up the corridor until she hit that crossing. She reacted exactly the same. They say animals can sense things. Whether there was something there, I do not know..."